The night after the Council Ball was colder than expected—colder than it should've been.
Mark lay in his dorm, staring at the ceiling, the dim glow of magical wards pulsing lazily across the walls. Despite the warmth of the room, a chill crept beneath his skin, rooted not in temperature, but in unease.
He had survived his first political trial.
Barely.
That line on the scoreboard—"Target: Mark Wilde. Vulnerability: Unknown"—wasn't just a label. It was a declaration. Someone in the Academy, maybe several someones, wanted him exposed or erased.
And now they were watching.
He turned over, eyes burning. Sleep wouldn't come.
By morning, the academy halls buzzed with tension. Word of Mark's performance had spread like wildfire. Some students kept their distance. Others whispered behind cupped hands. A few watched him openly—calculating, curious, or worse... interested.
"Freak," someone muttered as he passed.
"Didn't think he had it in him," another whispered.
Mark ignored it all. Let them talk. Let them underestimate him. That was the advantage.
He met Elira near the northern wing, where the Arcane Archives loomed—a towering obsidian tower wrapped in silver runes and foggy illusions that distorted its true size. From the outside, it looked like it held a few floors. But inside… it went down. Deep.
"You're sure about this?" Elira asked, walking beside him.
"No," Mark said flatly. "But I need answers."
"You're not the first Forbidden Tier to walk these halls," she said quietly. "But the last one was erased from every record. It's like they never existed."
Mark nodded. That only confirmed what he already suspected: his power wasn't just rare—it was outlawed. Or worse, feared.
They reached the Archive's threshold. Two Sentinels stood guard—armored constructs, their eyes glowing faintly blue. One stepped forward, scanning Mark with a flick of its wand-like arm.
"Clear," it said in a dead, mechanical tone. "Blood access: provisional. Wilde. Mark."
A sigil appeared above the door—an open eye wreathed in flame. The rune flared once and vanished.
The doors parted.
Inside, the air changed. Heavy. Ancient. The Archives smelled of parchment, wax, and lightning—like forgotten time itself. Tiered shelves spiraled downward in impossible directions, disappearing into a haze of fog and gravity-defying platforms.
Elira whistled. "I've only been down two levels. You?"
"First time," Mark murmured. "Feels like the kind of place where knowledge comes with a curse."
"It often does," said a voice behind them.
They turned.
A tall man stepped forward, cloaked in gray robes embroidered with tiny living runes. His face was old, but not tired—eyes sharp and skeptical.
"I'm Archivist Vellan," he said. "No student enters the third level uninvited."
Mark held out his hand. "Then maybe I should be the first exception."
Vellan studied him. Then glanced at Elira. "You trust him?"
She nodded once. "He's not reckless. He's… deliberate."
After a long silence, Vellan turned and led them down a floating staircase that shifted with every step.
"Follow closely. The Archives do not forgive strays."
Level three was colder. And darker. The floating candles here burned blue, and the scrolls were locked in glass cases etched with warning glyphs.
"Why am I here?" Mark asked as they entered a sealed corridor lined with statues of cloaked figures.
Vellan stopped in front of an ironbound door. "Because your mana signature matches something we haven't seen in a hundred years."
He placed his palm on the door, and the glyphs flared.
Inside was a single tome.
No title. No dust. No locks. But it radiated power.
Vellan's voice was almost reverent. "This book belonged to the last Forbidden Tier student. The one erased."
Mark stepped closer. As his hand neared the cover, a whisper echoed in his mind—not a voice, but a pressure, like the world was holding its breath.
He opened it.
Black ink danced across the page, rearranging itself into words.
"Power unbound by circle or oath. Magic not meant to be tamed. The Forbidden Tier is not born—it is remembered."
The next pages showed diagrams—runes Mark didn't recognize. Systems of spellcasting that bypassed conventional circles. Some runes pulsed like they were alive.
"Why would this be hidden?" he asked aloud.
Elira answered. "Because it's not sanctioned. This… this is magic that breaks the rules that keep the world stable."
Mark stared at the runes. Something about them felt… familiar.
As though his soul recognized them.
And then his hands began to glow.
Panic flickered in Elira's eyes. "Mark—"
"I'm not doing this," he said, voice strained.
The glyphs rose off the page, wrapping around his fingers like living bands of light. They didn't burn—they pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Vellan looked stunned. "It's choosing you."
Then everything snapped.
The Archive trembled.
Far below, something ancient and sealed stirred.
A thunderous crack echoed upward through the levels. Glyphs all across the walls lit up in red—emergency lockdown.
Vellan swore. "Something responded. You've awakened a Vein."
"A what?" Mark asked, energy still coiling around his arms.
"An arcane bloodline sealed into the bones of this world. Forbidden magic rooted in the ley-lines. Your magic didn't just resonate—it called to it."
"Is that bad?" Elira asked, already drawing a spell glyph into the air.
"It's catastrophic," Vellan said. "Because now they know."
Mark's heart froze.
"Who?"
Vellan's face darkened. "The Circle Keepers. The true enforcers of magical law. The ones who make students disappear."
Above them, alarms began to sound—sharp, clear, magical pulses.
A distant voice echoed through the archive: "Contain the anomaly. Do not let him reach the surface."
Elira grabbed Mark's hand. "We have to run."
"But the book—"
She grabbed it, stuffing it into a mana-sealed satchel.
"They'll destroy this. Just like they destroyed the last one."
Vellan opened a back corridor. "You've got twenty seconds before the Sentinels reach this floor. Go."
Mark hesitated only once.
This was the line.
He could play along. Be a ghost in someone else's system. Try to survive quietly.
Or—
He could run.
Fight.
Rewrite everything.
He looked at Elira, her grip unrelenting, her eyes blazing with belief.
He ran.
They emerged into the night, breathless, the book pulsing in her bag and runes still trailing Mark's fingertips like phantom chains.
Above the academy, the sky cracked with unnatural lightning.
And somewhere—miles beneath the school, in vaults not spoken of in any textbook—a locked sarcophagus pulsed once.
The seals flickered.
The thing inside opened one glowing eye.